You might probably be scratching your head, wondering what in the world a ‘hybrid’ optical drive actually is. Apparently, it seems that Hitachi’s idea of such a device is to to combine both flash storage and an optical drive into one single hardware that serves two purposes. Sounds amazing, no?

Read on to find out more.

What do you do when you have a spare optical drive and an SSD lying around? Most of us would probably find a spare PC to shove them into, but apparently, the engineers over at Hitachi-LG Data Storage had found a new way to reinvent the optical drive.

Unlike a typical optical drive, the new hybrid optical drive (also known as the “Wonder”) comes bundled with onboard Flash memory, essentially turning it into a unique two-in-one device which serves both the roles of optical drive and SSD. It has been suggested that such devices may find some love from OEMs seeking to build extremely small or thin PCs, as there is no need to allocate any additional space for a storage device.

Unfortunately, Hitachi has not released any information about the “Wonder”, such as its storage capacity and launch date, or whether any driver are required in order for an operating system to successfully use the “Wonder” without any issues. Until more information is forthcoming, it will be difficult to gauge how well the “Wonder” will be received in the hardware market.

What we do know, however, is that the Wonder will make use of the latest SATA III standard which has a theoretical transfer speed limit of 6.0GBps. That, and the fact that such hybrid devices are no longer just the products of science-fiction or future technology.